MONT BLANC 233 



lowlands from the plains of Burgundy and Franche-Comte, which 

 stretch out in faint amethystine spaces that melt into the far-off 

 horizon. There are doubtless many more picturesque summit- 

 views in the Alps . But for an equally impressive and suggestive 

 panorama the climber must go to the Caucasus or Sikkim. 



De Saussure in his manuscript diary gives a prodigious to use 

 his own favourite adjective list of the work he accomplished 

 in the four and a half hours he spent on the top of Mont Blanc, 

 and concludes it with the following sentence : 



' My work would have been far more complete had I been in any 

 ordinary situation, and I venture to boast that it needed no common 

 effort to accomplish what I did in the condition I was. Despite the 

 delight which this superb spectacle gave me, I felt a painful sense of 

 not being able to draw from it all the profit possible, and that my power 

 of appreciation was limited by my difficulty in breathing. I was like 

 an epicure invited to a splendid festival and prevented from enjoying 

 it by violent nausea. 



' At length the clouds which had gathered under my feet about the 

 tops of the lower mountains began to collect round Mont Blanc. The 

 fear of taking as long to go down as I had to mount forced me, at 

 3.30 P.M., to leave this post which I had so long wished to reach. I 

 went with a regret in my heart at not having got all the advantage 

 I had hoped out of it. For though I had set to work first on what 

 seemed to me of the greatest interest, I counted what I had done but 

 little compared to what I had hoped to do.' 



To the top of the Rochers Rouges the party took under an 

 hour : 



' Here began the trying part of the descent. The view of the 

 precipices was rendered more alarming by a burning sun which shone 

 in my eyes and softened the surface of the snow which was our sup- 

 port. From the top to the camp took us half the time it had in 

 mounting, and that without any exhaustion, which proves it is the 

 pressure on the chest from lifting the knees which causes the enormous 

 fatigue one feels in going uphill. An hour more brought us to a 

 rock I call the " Rocher de 1'Heureux Retour." It was 7.15, and I 

 determined to sleep there. We pitched our tent against the southern 

 end of the rock in a truly singular situation. It was on the snow and 

 at the edge of a great crevasse which cut it off from a very steep 

 slope falling towards the great hollow under the rocks of the Dome. 

 This rock is opposite what we call from Geneva the third staircase 



